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What do you think of this project?


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lol. the Brewery District store is my local one, been shopping there since it opened. In this particular case, a fair amount of the floorspace is taken up by 'extras' like a cupcake counter, cafe, a proliferation of deli counters, and a lot of open space for cafe tables and displays. in the case of the Brewery District Loblaws, the actual 'Grocery-Store' bit is a fair bit smaller than the total square footage. the rest being features, helping to fill out the food offerings in the otherwise slightly spotty Brewery District as a whole.
That being said, the grocery area, while definitely sufficient to sustain an apartment, does lack in some areas. it doesn't have a consistent selection of frozen food, and the size of stuff they carry is small. (ie only small bags of french fries, fewer family-size items like cereal, etc) As someone living in an actual house right now, The selection is at times insufficient, and I still have to make the longer trek to the Westmount Safeway (idk how big, but that's full-size, whatever that equates to) to get things like cleaning supplies in bigger bottles, soap refills, and supplies for big dinners. The store just isn't stocked as a one-stop shop for a household, and given the retail mix of the Brewery District right now, the complex as a whole doesn't fill in the gaps (yet, hopefully this will improve)
IDK enough about how stores are stocked, how those decisions are made, whether the stock choices at the Brewery District are driven by marketing or by the size of the store. Maybe they could be a fully useable copy of a full-size safeway if they dropped the (really fun but kinda superfluous) cupcake counter etc. But i do think the smaller stores drive a lot of decisions and cutbacks that are difficult for retailers to navigate. They aren't sure what to carry and what to cut, and our retail landscape of essential stores (Loblaws, Safeway, Shoppers, Rexall, Superstore, etc) isn't diverse enough to fill those gaps, leaving market share out in the open. The Answer: sell everything, one-stop shop, and build the store assize enough to fill it! This isn't an ideal way of handling the situation, especially in an urban environment. But unless we have a whole bunch of small, convenient shops/chains that fill the household consumer niches of 'cleaning supplies' and 'bulk groceries' and 'delis that aren't subway but still sell food that you an microwave and eat' (like the deli counters at loblaws sell) our major Grocery Chains are going to expand to serve those markets, and build large stores that allow them to provide these services as well as the basic 'sell food.'
IDK about all this, but i think Loblaws is trying to fill a whole bunch of niches at once, they way it tries to in the Brewery District. Given the lack of serious corporate competition, it makes business sense to do so, to the consumer's benefit. In the end, selling a full spectrum of groceries, as well as providing all the extra services we as consumers expect our grocers to have, takes a lot of space.
LoL, we shop at the same place! 🤣🤣
I do understand that culturally, the big one-stop shop is kind of ingrained in North America, but I still find it rather amusing. There's a few things I don't understand here, to be honest, and this whole grocery store thing is one of them.
 
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LoL, we shop at the same place! 🤣🤣
I do understand that culturally, the big one-stop shop is kind of ingrained in North America, but I still find it rather amusing. There's a few things I don't understand here, to be honest, and this whole grocery store thing is one of them.
With the car-based culture, there are fewer stores. Larger, centrally located locations have a larger customer base, and therefore need more inventory. Also, daily trips to the market isn't the norm, so larger packages are needed. Without those daily trips, there is less propensity for fresh cooking. With fresh cooking, fewer ingredients can make many things, but with the North American heat-and-serve mentality, you need a greater variety of pre-made foods. This all adds up to a larger space for the store.

Not to mention the simple fact that space is more abundant and expected from people in North America.
 
With the car-based culture, there are fewer stores. Larger, centrally located locations have a larger customer base, and therefore need more inventory. Also, daily trips to the market isn't the norm, so larger packages are needed. Without those daily trips, there is less propensity for fresh cooking. With fresh cooking, fewer ingredients can make many things, but with the North American heat-and-serve mentality, you need a greater variety of pre-made foods. This all adds up to a larger space for the store.

Not to mention the simple fact that space is more abundant and expected from people in North America.
Ah, it'll just take me a couple of years to get used to it hahahahahahahaha.
I just find some aspects of North American culture particularly curious, that's all. I guess Brazil, for some strange reason, shares some aspects with Europe, more than with North America.

That said, I really can't wait for this particular grocery store to be operational, as moving to the ICE District is on my short term plans and I'd love to be able to shop without needing to take my car out of the garage.
 
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It looks like they are going to build half the podium with steel and half with concrete. The concrete construction would be where the future tower would be built I am thinking? Long time lurker! First post LOL!
Welcome to the forum! Awesome update on that, thanks!

Yup, as @archited and @Daveography, the concrete part is where the high rise might, eventually, one day in a distant future, be built... But I'm not holding my breath 🤣🤣
 
Welcome to the forum! Awesome update on that, thanks!

Yup, as @archited and @Daveography, the concrete part is where the high rise might, eventually, one day in a distant future, be built... But I'm not holding my breath 🤣🤣

I personally think they'll move the tower to the land the own on 104 street next to the affordable storage building. They also own the old CBSA building adjacent to this
 

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